Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Ok, everybody! You've all mostly been patient. I apologize that it took me a couple of extra days this year. I've been quite busy with the _real_ job. This season's college football bowl pool files are now ready!

Some noteworthy items:

Since we again aren't waiting until after the Army-Navy game, and we don't know Army and Navy's final records, I've simply listed what each of those two teams may have for final records. That's simpler than leaving those cells unprotected, allowing you to edit them, and then dealing with the possibility that you do that AFTER picks are entered and thereby cause the picks for those game to no longer match.

The bowl line-up is different then last year. We're down one bowl! No more Poinsettia Bowl. :: Sniff ::

Also, three other bowls got a rename: The Miami Beach Bowl is now the Frisco Bowl. The St. Petersburg Bowl is now the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl. O_o And the Russell Athletic Bowl is now the Camping World Bowl.

There aren't currently betting lines set on the two games involving Army and Navy, so I just added the spreads for those already available -- check Vegas Insider or similar sites. I did, though, use the first team as the "favorite" for those two games, so that I could do some testing with the "Odds of Winning" functionality, which doesn't work unless favorites are set. This is interesting to know, so that if you find a game has no favorite, at least pick one of the teams and either leave the Spread blank or set it to zero.

My wife, son, and I haven't had a chance to make our picks yet, so for those of you who like to use our picks as benchmarks of sorts, you'll have to wait until I update that later.

Finally, I did choose to keep the FCS-level Celebration Bowl as part of the line-up. Feel free to have your participants make picks for that game or not, as you like. It ends up being an exciting game, at least.

For those unfamiliar with the two-file system, the idea is that pool managers can distribute the simple, single person Entry Form version to those in their pool to make their picks and assign confidence points. The participants them email back that file, and the manager can simply copy, paste special... values those picks and points into the Summary file, which is where they manage everything.

As always, the file is protected, but not with a password, so feel free to unprotect the workbook and then unhide some of the sheets running this stuff behind the scenes to see how it works. And if you add some cool hacks/additions, pass them along, so we can all enjoy them.

Final, as also always happens each year, several folks, as they were pinging, pestering, checking-in with me offered to pay me or donate to me for the sheets. This, like the NFL pick 'em sheet and the new NCAA football pick 'em sheet I do, I do for free as a labor of love. That said, if you are so compelled, feel free to PayPal me whatever you like:

@Netlaur, great question! Here's why: Because last year there were 42 bowl games (This year there is no Poinsettia Bowl.) and I would have had to make some major changes to fully remove a bowl PLUS I can imagine there being a new bowl next year and I'd have to them make major changes to add a bowl right back, so I decided simply to hide one of the rows. If you look, you'll see that row 24 is hidden. Now, I bet when you added your points to all of your picks, you simply copied and pasted them down for the whole range, so you actually pasted a 1 into that hidden row 24. That's why you're getting a total of 42 instead of 41. If you would select L23:L25 and delete the values, then type into each cell a 1, you'd be back to a total of 41.

First off, thanks a ton. I have been using your sheets for everything for the last few years. I am pretty broke with Christmas coming up, but on Jan 1 when I get my new years paycheck, I will send you some $ for your hard work.

A few questions, do we have to assign points for games? If we just wanted to base the total off of your record, is there an easy way to set that up with the tie breaker being closest to the total score of the championship game without going over? The basis of your point system is that we assign points to the games we are more sure about? So if we know that OSU will beat VT we assign that the most points and get those points if we are correct?

@N. Johnson, yes the "confidences points" system i've implemented is just as you say: if you are more sure or confident of the outcome, you wager more points on it. You could also just assign confidence points of 1 to all games to achieve what you want, except, of course, the tie-breaker element, which would have to be something you either manage separately or build it into the spreadsheet.

@Reinekemomof5, Thanks! Unfortunately, the way I designed this spreadsheet isn't very conducive to adding more participants. that is, it's possible, it's just not very easy. Maybe you can simply track the last ten in a separate copy of the spreadsheet? I realize that's not ideal.